Ericsson partners with IT giants

Yesterday saw two major announcements from Ericsson. In the first, the company said that it would be partnering with Google to extend the reach of the Ericsson cloud-based MediaFirst TV Platform into the Android TV ecosystem, Google’s operating system for the set-top box.

The integration of Ericsson MediaFirst TV Platform with Android TV will provide an additional pathway to extend MediaFirst cloud-based TV services, the company said, including 4K-UHD live TV channels, VoD, catch-up TV and cloud DVR to an even wider subscriber base.

According to Ericsson, the partnership with Google will give operators the opportunity to benefit from Android TV’s growing presence on connected TV operating systems, without the need for additional hardware costs.

Operators will, it says, be able to partner with manufacturers of Android TV devices to deliver new hardware-based functionality as well as niche over-the-top programming, or deploy additional applications in the Android operating system.

In separate blog posts, Elisabetta Romano, VP and head of TV and media at Ericsson and Jim Blakley, general manager of visual cloud division at Intel, said the goal is to accelerate opportunities for media companies through Ericsson’s leadership in video processing, mobility and cloud infrastructure, alongside Intel’s advancements in compute, storage and networking technologies.